Hickey: UTSA remains committed to Conference USA

“We’re still very excited about becoming a part of Conference USA,” Hickey said. “It’s a great group of schools. You never want universities to leave. But at the same time, if they think that’s best for (their) program, so be it.”

A day after adding Western Kentucky to its lineup for the 2014-15 season, C-USA lost its defending champion in football.

The University of Tulsa announced Tuesday that it will play one more season in C-USA before joining in 2014-15 a conference made up of Football Bowl Subdivision members currently under the Big East umbrella.

Hickey said the latest move doesn’t affect UTSA’s desire to move all its sports programs into C-USA beginning this summer.

“No, no,” she said. “We’re very happy to have a conference where we can play FBS football. We’re really proud to be a member.”

UTSA has felt the tremors of realignment twice since commiting to C-USA 10 months ago.

First, Tulane and East Carolina announced in November that they were leaving for the Big East. In response, C-USA added Florida Atlantic and Middle Tennessee.

While all four of those schools will play under the C-USA umbrella in 2013-14, it will be the last season for both Tulane and East Carolina.

All the maneuvering ultimately will tilt the geographics of C-USA slightly to the east from the configuration that UTSA joined in May of 2012.

“There’s going to be a little more travel involved than we thought when we first joined the conference,” Hickey said. “But it’s not prohibitive travel. And it’s going to some really great communities, some really great cities, some campuses that have very competitive programs.